Saving Francesca

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Saving Francesca

Marchetta, Melina.  Saving Francesca. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 2003. 

Awards/Honors:

South Australia Premier's Awards, Children's Literature Award, 2004

Annotation:  Francesca is forced to make new friends when she leaves her all girls’ Catholic school to enroll in co-ed St. Sebastian’s. To make matters worse, her best friends have all enrolled in another parochial school, the boys at St. Sebastian’s only care about burps and farts, and Francesca’s mom hasn’t been feeling well. Francesca faces a year of trial and testing on her own.

Book Talk:

Francesca:

“ ‘Just ask me how I’m feeling,’ I want to say. ‘Just ask and I may tell you.’

But no one does.”

Francesca is a 16 year old Italian Catholic school girl living in Australia. She and her closest friends have had some terrific years at St. Stella’s and she’d like nothing more than to enroll in St. Pius to finish with them. The trouble that is her overbearing mother insists she attend St. Sebastian’s and then continues to drive Francesca crazy by signing encouraging anthems before school and posting inspirational messages on her bathroom mirror. How will Francesca ever fit in with a mother like that? Although, mum has been acting kind of strange lately…in fact she isn’t even getting out of bed. 

" 'My mum's sick,' I say in a hushed tone.'

...I look at them and I don't know what to say... People want symptoms. They want physical evidence. This thing my mum has is like the X-Files. It can't be explained to the non-believer, and I'm just not ready to describe it at all right now."

Who will be up to the task of Saving Francesca when she hasn’t got a soul to preserve her?